Does Australia have, as Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said last week, a “crisis of male violence”? He was speaking at a family violence symposium, but clearly his words were uttered in the context of the Bondi mass murder and the Wakeley stabbing. The question isn’t only on political minds.
Emma Connors at the Financial Review examined “Why so many younger men are so angry“, quoting several commentators who suggested economics lay at the heart of male marginalisation and its effects — alienated men punching downward toward those they can reach. Louise Milligan wrote a searing piece on the burden of male violence, drawing on her own experiences both as a journalist (and now novelist) and as a mother. Michelle Elias at SBS explored the links between domestic violence, misogynist culture and terrorism. Jane Gilmore explored a similar theme last week in Crikey.
It’s easy to feel that we’ve made no progress on the murder of women by men, but there has been progress. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, domestic homicide rates have fallen substantially since the 1980s, and the rate of female victimisation has fallen much more than male victimisation rates. Intimate partner homicide rates have fallen even more, though family member homicide rates haven’t seen the same falls. The falls are substantial enough that the actual number, not just the rate, of intimate partner homicide, has fallen — a decade ago over 60 women a year were murdered by partners; the number has been below 50 since 2018.
Further, the overall incidence of violence experienced by women has fallen over the past decade. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data on victimisation rates — that is, not reported crime, but people’s experience of crime — there has been a marked fall in physical assault across the country, but a small rise in sexual violence.
This doesn’t mean there’s no crisis; even if fewer women are dying, their numbers still run into the dozens, and rates of sexual violence against women by partners have not fallen at all over the last two decades. In NSW, the level of family violence being reported has increased significantly in recent years, although this may reflect victims being more willing to recognise and report violence. And it doesn’t mean that our response can’t be improved. Men, and their lawyers, still effectively exploit and game the criminal justice system, which rarely treats violence against women and children with the seriousness it deserves.
The idea that specific factors like economic changes or the rise of social media are responsible for male violence has to address these sometimes contradictory trends. Emma Dawson of Per Capita, interviewed by the AFR, strongly made the link between male alienation and neoliberalism: in the words of the reporter, Dawson argued “offshoring of manufacturing and related industries and ever-increasing house prices have shattered traditional social compacts … This is particularly the case for males who in previous decades would have left school and got a blue-collar job, many of which have disappeared in Australia with the hollowing out of manufacturing and related industries. There are plenty of entry-level jobs in service industries such as teaching and nursing, but these are often viewed as women’s work.”
This link has been put forward over an extended period, particularly in the US, and used partly to explain the rise of Donald Trump.
If this were the case, you’d expect that male workforce participation would be lower than it used to be — and that is certainly the case compared to 20 years ago; while the participation rate of women is much higher than in 2004.
But the link is otherwise hard to make out: manufacturing employment has shrunk dramatically in Australia over the last three decades, at the same time as rates of domestic homicide have fallen materially. Rates of physical violence have also declined over the last decade; during that time, manufacturing remained at around 900,000 workers while the rest of the workforce grew significantly.
And while Australia has transformed into a service economy and the bulk of jobs growth in recent years has been for women, it’s not true that traditional blue-collar jobs have vanished: mining employment has expanded from 100,000 twenty years ago to over 300,000 now; construction has increased as a proportion of the workforce in that time; and over the last five years construction has put on 200,000 more workers. Transport — nearly 80% male — has also expanded over the last two decades.
It’s also puzzling that, if young men who don’t want to do “women’s work” are alienated because of the lack of traditional male jobs, the Australian Defence Force should be in a near-constant recruitment crisis. Attempts to link male alienation to specific industry policies seem hard to substantiate.
That’s not to say neoliberalism — which, admittedly, gets the blame for everything — hasn’t had indirect impacts. The persistent effort by governments and corporations to make all workers’ lives more financially precarious — part of the transfer of certainty from workers to corporations that has characterised the practice of neoliberalism — surely has a similar effect to any removal of traditional male jobs in terms of starting a family and buying a house.
The individualistic focus of neoliberalism, and its erasure of communitarian institutions (such as trade unions), has removed a source of support for people struggling economically — in the US, there is good evidence that a decline in churchgoing (not religiosity, but the actual social practice of attending a local church community) is linked to “deaths of despair”.
But most of all, the core message of neoliberalism is that individuals have no worth except economically; they exist only as a producer and consumer, and their goal is to maximise their value in both areas, while competing against billions of other individuals. In a true market economy, your only value and identity is your economic status, not any other non-economic identity such as gender, nationality, race, sexual preference or socio-economic status.
And at any one time, even when the economy is flourishing, half the population will be below average in terms of their economic value. Neoliberalism has created an environment in which at least half of all people receive the signal that they are failing according to the only standard that matters. The response of many is to turn to those other forms of identity where they stand a greater chance of success — driving greater tribalism, separatism, identity insularity and division. Or to experience alienation and marginalisation.
Whether any of that is applicable to male violence can’t ever be known for sure, of course, and Australian women can’t wait while society rewrites the core messages it gives to its citizens and particularly young men. All we can know at the moment is that there is a crisis, and it is possible to reduce male violence toward women.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.
